Deathlands - The Twilight Children

by James Axler

"Yeah. Long as you're under the age of twenty-five."

  She turned to the young man who was lounging in the doorway. "I just don't get why, Frank."

  "Moses says it's what's needed."

  "Why?"

  He looked a little puzzled. "You don't ask 'why' to things Moses says."

  "You mean you just do his bidding and work hard and then, just when most people would be marrying and having children and settling down, you just offer yourself up. And you miss all the good things."

  Frank stared at the red-haired woman as if she was totally deranged. "We have to do it. It's the way. Always was the way here in Quindley."

  "No point in arguing," Mildred said. "Just like banging your head up against a brick wall."

  "It isn't even thought of." Frank was almost lost for words. "To argue about anything Moses... What he says is what happens. That's all."

  "We going to get to meet him?" Ryan asked.

  "You don't-"

  "Yeah. I remember. Talk to him but not see him. When's that happen?"

  "Soon. But if he wants it, then it'll happen. But if Moses decides not, then it won't."

  DOROTHY HAD VANISHED with Michael and Dean.

  The rest walked over the causeway, in among the cultivated fields and allotments. Jehu himself had come to lead them, his hair untied, streaming about his shoulders, making him look like one of the children in the corn.

  Most of the young men and women ignored the outlanders, though there was still some residual resistance to the sight of Doc. But the old man strode along, swinging his sword stick, smiling at everyone.

  "A good, good morning to you all. May the bird of happiness fly up your nose, children. Tote that bale and lift that barge, or something like that. So that juvenile man river can just keep rolling along."

  Not one of them spoke to him, several making the same sign to avert the eye of evil.

  Jehu paused. "Could you not talk to them, oldie Doc? It will make trouble. Moses said you could walk around, but he would be unhappy if there was difficulties."

  "And if Moses is unhappy, then everyone gets to be unhappy. That it, Jehu?" Mildred grinned. "Apart from there being nobody over twenty-five, I can't say there are many black youngsters in Quindley, either."

  The frank and open face clouded over. "It isn't that we are precluded... prejudiced? Is that the word?"

  "Sure is," Mildred agreed. "Keep talking, sonny. Tell me how some of your best friends are black."

  "No, I have no friends who are black," he replied, straight-faced. "Moses would welcome anyone.. .if they are young enough. In fact, he makes a point in his teachings to us that we need new blood. There are not enough babies being birthed here in the ville. But it seems that no black-faced people come here. I think there might have been one or two, passing by. But none of them have stayed here. Never."

  "Us black folk got more sense, land's sake we do."

  "THE LITTLE ONES WILL BE just a way along this path here. We can walk up to the top of the hill and look down on the part of the woods where we always come to collect the broken branches for the fires."

  "You got guards out?" J.B. looked around, the Uzi ready in his hand.

  "There will be four with them, each carrying a long blaster. Moses ordered a doubling of care when he heard about your finding the stickies." Jehu hawked and spit on the path, rubbing it in with his feet, while making the horned gesture with his fingers. "Satan's spawn," he said.

  "You not had trouble with them before?" Ryan was taking deep breaths of the morning air, still conscious that all wasn't completely well with the wound in his neck. But Mildred had put on a fresh, much smaller dressing that morning, reporting that the healing process was almost done.

  "We have had small attacks by muties. But they aren't organized, and we retreat to the ville and hold them off from there. But stickies are not well-known."

  "They can go around in little groups," Ryan said. "But I've known of camps of dozens, and some of them have been well run. Mebbe you've been lucky."

  "Quindley looks after itself." Jehu recited it like it was a great religious truth.

  THE SCENT OF BALSAM grew stronger as they walked in single file through a sun-splashed path of the forest, climbing along a well-marked trail.

  Krysty and Ryan were bringing up the rear when she suddenly stopped, pressing her fingers to her temple.

  "Trouble?" he asked, his hand dropping by a combat reflex down onto the butt of the SIG-Sauer.

  "Could be. Just felt a flash of something."

  "Close?"

  "Fairly close. Doesn't feel like norms. More like muties, but.,."

  "Stickles?"

  Krysty shook her head. "No. Gone again. Don't mention it to the others. Could be wrong."

  Jehu had stopped at th e crest of the hill, sweeping out his hand to indicate the woods and clearings below him, dotted with the diminutive figures of the little children, busy collecting wood for the ville's fires.

  "Here is the rich and wonderful plenty that Moses has given us," he said. "This is our reward for treading only in the prints of his feet."

  Then the screaming started.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ryan had the Steyr SSG-70 unslung and to his right shoulder before the first echo of that desperate shrill scream had begun to fade across the whispering tops of the pines. He put his eye to the Starlite night scope, using the power laser image enhancer, searching for the best target, the frightened children filling his field of vision.

  "Stickies!" Krysty breathed at his side. "Knew I felt something bad."

  Jehu rushed down the far side of the gentle hill, toward the panicked little ones. He carried no blaster and had simply drawn his dagger, the same blade that had opened Jimmy's throat the night before.

  "Brave or stupe," J.B. said, standing with the Uzi at his hip, looking down at the scene of confusion.

  "Why do you not commence firing at the ranks of the ungodly, John Dix?" Doc asked.

  "Out of range."

  The nearest child was more than three hundred yards away, but they were all running back and forth, screaming for rescue from the four or five muties that had come lurching suddenly out of the undergrowth.

  "Can't we go down and help?" Mildred had the Czech ZKR 551 target revolver cocked in her hand.

  Excellent shootist though she was, the range and the rapid movement below made it an almost impossible shot.

  "Wait," Ryan said. "Could be an ambush. Could be more of them in the trees."

  "I make it five. Two children down already." J.B. shaded his eyes with his hands, peering into the sun. "Think they're after prisoners."

  "Suffer the little children," Doc muttered, but Ryan was already concentrating on doing some shooting.

  The rifle snapped once, and he had the satisfaction of seeing one of the marauding stickles throw up its hands and tumble into the dirt like a discarded sack of old clothes.

  The other four paused at the sound of the shot. On the ridge, Ryan could hear their harsh, guttural yells of alarm and warning. He decided that the likelihood was that it probably wasn't any kind of trap.

  "J.B., go down there. Rest of you with him. I'll do what I can up here and then follow on down."

  The Armorer didn't need to be told twice. Giving a whoop of delight, Uzi at his hip, he ran down the hillside, pursuing the tall, lean figure of Jehu.

  Mildred was at his heels, followed by the lumbering Doc. Krysty hesitated a moment, her snub-nosed Smith & Wesson 640 double-action in her right fist.

  "Dean and Michael?" she queried.

  Ryan squeezed off a second round, cursing under his breath as he saw the shot gouge a strip of white wood out of a larch, inches from the head of one of the stickies.

  "Bastard! Dean? He and Michael went with that Dorothy. Both got blasters. Would have heard shooting if they'd been jumped by muties."

  She nodded. "Guess so. See you down there." Krysty turned and ran after the others, her blazing crimson hair streaming behind her
like a battle pennant.

  Ryan knelt down to make himself steadier, aiming carefully and putting the third bullet through the chest of another of the stickies, seeing through the scope the way that the round punched a hole larger than a man's fist out of the creature's back. The stickie staggered backward, tripping over a cowering child before crashing down in a tangle of limbs.

  "Two down," he said.

  The three surviving muties had gathered themselves into a vaguely defensive ring. Sunlight glittered on steel, and Ryan saw that they all held crude axes.

  Jehu was less than fifty yards away from them, arms pumping, mouth open in a soundless scream, his slim knife in his hand. The dappled sunlight filtering through the branches of the trees splashed on his golden hair as he charged.

  One of the little girls, eyes staring in mindless terror, actually ran into the arms of the tallest of the surviving stickies. The suckered fingers grabbed at her arms, tearing circles of skin away, blood speckling her pale blue shirt.

  Ryan saw it all through the scope, but it was over too fast for him to do anything to prevent it.

  The mutie's hand went to the child's throat and clamped shut. The immensely strong fingers squeezed once, and blood gushed from her open mouth and nostrils, from her ears and from her sky-blue eyes.

  Ryan didn't have a chance to prevent the brutish murder, but he had time to avenge it.

  The stickie whooped in glee at the easy killing, lifting one crimsoned hand to its face, its forked reptilian tongue snaking out to lap the fresh blood.

  The 7.62 mm round smashed into the center of its hoggish nose, tumbling as it entered the space behind the face, shredding the vicious brain as it distorted, eventually exiting just behind the creature's left ear.

  Stickies rarely carried blasters. Their perverse delight in all fires and explosions meant that any gun falling into their suckered hands tended to be emptied mindlessly into the sky-or into each other.

  Also, they had virtually no idea at all of combat skills. Generally they would attack when they felt like it and stop when they'd either been victorious or were dead.

  The two muties left standing might have had a chance of survival if they'd turned and run into the surrounding forest. But, despite the fact that Ryan had obviously been able to pick them off at long range, they made no attempt to escape.

  "Fireblast!"

  Because of the contours of the hillside, Jehu was now directly hi Ryan's line of fire, obscuring the chance to take out the last two muties with a pair of easy shots.

  J.B. and Mildred were closing in on the stickies Doc twenty paces behind them, Krysty just overtaking him. gut none of them was near enough to interfere in the final scene of the lethal drama.

  The Armorer's words came to Ryan. "Brave or stupe?" There was no need at all for the young man to risk his own life by throwing himself against the pair of waiting muties. He could easily have stood off and allowed Ryan, Mildred or J.B. to have safely chilled them.

  "For Moses!" The cry rose above the sobbing of the surviving children, most of whom were now sitting or lying on the soft grass between the trees, watching the last moments of the muties' assault on them.

  The nearest stickie swung its crude ax at Jehu, but the agile young man dodged under it, cutting upward with his own knife. Ryan was on his feet, walking slowly down the slope, knowing that haste would do nothing to alter the eventual outcome. He heard the mutie yelp in pain, and saw a dark patch of blood appear along the side of its ribs.

  The second creature grabbed at the diving figure of the young man, and there was the loud noise of ripping cloth. But Jehu's momentum carried him through and past, snatching a moment to try to stab the mutie.

  "Stupe and brave," Ryan muttered, pausing in mid-stride, seeing that the leader of the ville wasn't particularly skilled at knife-fighting.

  The Trader used to say that you didn't get to live long in Deathlands if you didn't have courage. But you lived even less long if you didn't also have some brains.

  "Brains before balls" had been his shorthand saying, though it had sometimes annoyed the tough women who rode with him on the war wags.

  Jehu had the balls all right, getting up hi a fighter's crouch, facing the two gibbering stickles. But his small knife was no weapon against their hatchets.

  "Mildred!" Ryan yelled. "Do them."

  For someone who had won a silver medal in the free pistol-shooting at the last ever Olympic Games in Miami in 1996, it was like picking off carp in a bathtub.

  The doctor fired two careful shots, the Smith & Wesson .38s easily finding their targets.

  One stickie hurled his ax spinning high in the air as he went down, with a bullet through his left eye, the blade sticking among the upper branches of a Douglas fir. His comrade was hit in the side of the head, just above the right ear, the big round exiting through his left cheek, an inch below his eye.

  After the fiat crack of the revolver, the morning seemed almost silent.

  The weeping little ones had fallen away to a quick sobbing. One small boy moaned in pain and shock, a long strip of skin torn away from ankle to thigh, blood soaking into the soft carpet of pine needles beneath him. Jehu had dropped to his knees, his eyes closed, his lips moving.

  "Nice shooting, Mildred," J.B. said, his eyes glinting behind his glasses as he continued to scan the darkness beneath the surrounding trees in case there were more stickles on the loose.

  Ryan continued down the slope to rejoin his friends. Krysty and Doc were trying to comfort the terrified children. Mildred Wyeth had walked over to check that all of the muties were dead. Not that Ryan had any doubts on that score. He knew killing shots when he saw them.

  "All done?" he called.

  "Yeah." Mildred looked around the clearing. "We going to leave them here? The kids should be taken back to the ville as soon as possible. There's four of them dead. The one with the wounded leg needs treatment."

  "Jehu?" Ryan had nearly reached the kneeling young man, who seemed to be oblivious to what had happened around him. "You all right?"

  "Blessed Moses forgive us for our sins."

  Ryan laid a hand on Jehu's shoulder, shaking him gently. "Come on. It's over."

  But the blue eyes stayed closed, the droning voice not ceasing. "Let us welcome the shadow of death in this dark valley. It is a sign that we have not worked hard enough and have walked from the path of light into the deep midnight. Save us, wonderful Moses, from this place of blood."

  Ryan shook him much harder. He'd seen plenty of religious crazies throughout Deathlands and neve r met one that he'd truly liked.

  "Get the fuck up, boy," he said."You're the leader of this place, and you got some dead children to take home and bury. And there's wounded. Decisions on the stickies." He hauled Jehu to his feet.

  "You saved my life. You, an oldie. An outlander. Saved my hie."

  His voice trembled with shock.

  "It was Mildred who took out the last two for you."

  "The... the black woman oldie?"

  Mildred turned and smiled. "Kind of difficult to come to terms with, is it, boy? Not just an old person. Not even an old woman. But an old black woman. Goin' to take some hard thinking on that, isn't it?"

  The children had been herded together, and J.B. had hoisted the injured little boy onto his back. In their horror at the stickies, most of the little ones seemed to have temporarily overcome their revulsion and fear of Doc and were happy to have him standing close by, guarding them.

  The woods were returning quickly to normal. A red-capped jay had perched on a broken branch near where the mutie's ax had become jammed. Turquoise flies were gathering to feed on the dark puddles of spilled blood.

  Far above them Ryan noticed a jet-black carrion crow, circling slowly, bright eyes staring down at the prospect of some fine feeding.

  MILDRED BANDAGED the boy's leg as soon as they got back, covering it with a layer of clean linen, having first washed the raw wound with a bowl of the crystal lake water. As h
e recovered his nerve, the child became less and less happy about being tended by an outland stranger. All his young life he'd been reared on Moses's teaching that old meant bad and evil.

  The bodies were taken away into one of the smaller buildings that backed onto Shamplin Lake, to be mourned by the community. Dorothy appeared out of the crowd, with Dean and Michael following sheepishly at her side.

  "You bring death at your shoulder, outlander," she hissed accusingly. "Isaac's sweet brother, then Jimmy and now four of our precious jewels."

  "You think we're in league with the bastard stickies? Then you got a sicker warped mind than I thought."